Should more games be rated AO?

[Final-Fan]

naznatips said:

bdbdbd said:
@Final-Fan: Naznatips is saying that the similar people who watch Die Hard, watch the Saw.

No, what I'm saying is Die Hard, just like Saw, is not appropriate for children. This is why it has an R rating. Yes Final-Fan, I am saying Die Hard and Saw are appropriate for the same audiences. Are you saying people should be older than 17 to see Saw? I can't see how that makes much sense. I'd say by age 17 most kids are mature enough to watch a graphic movie like that. What other age requirements would you add? 21? I guess my point is, you're right that Die Hard and Saw are very different. I think Die Hard is probably appropriate for kids down to age 15, but that really doesn't change the rating bracket does it? Yes, Saw is gorey and disgusting, but that doesn't mean you should start expanding age qualifications past reasonable limits. 17 is plenty old enough for a kid to see Saw.

Similarly, a game like Gears of War is a game. Yes, it's gorey, but how could you really expect them to mark that higher than 17 years old? I agree that a Mature rated game does not equal a mature game (or a game targeted at adults) in and of itself, but certainly a 17 year old is mentally capable of playing such a game. Past that it's really pointless to have higher rating standards. I understand Manhunt 2 getting an AO rating, because with the control scheme I think the game is past the point of violent and approaching the point of completely obscene.

Parents do have a responsibility to protect their kids from Mature content, and I agree that it's difficult to do so, but I also believe in the companies rights to publish these games. Kids can sneak into R rated movies too (I know I did when I was young). That doesn't mean that there should be no R rated movies or that the R rating is too low. Honestly, I don't care for Mature rated games very much. I enjoy a couple, but in general I would rather play Mario than Grand Theft Auto. I still believe that they are well within reason to have these games published with a Mature rating. I think Manhunt 2 is a good example that graphic content has its limits, and the ESRB is staying within these reasonable limits with its rating systems.

But that's the whole point of R versus NC-17. You can escort youngsters into R movies but not NC-17 ones. A 15-year-old with an inattentive parent could see Saw, Saw II, and Saw III in theaters, but would not have been able to had they been rated NC-17. NC-17 is indeed a different age restriction than R, and it is one that should have been applied to Saw by your own admission.

Anyway, I think that AO should not be a rating only for the absolute most depraved and sick games; rather, it should differentiate between a game such as Halo 3, with lots of violence and death, and a game like Gears of War, with equivalent amounts of violence and death, but much more explicitly and graphically represented.

And the other part of my OP argument was that the ratings system is broken now because when Manhunt 2 was given its appropriate rating, it caused instant death to that game when all 3 console makers said that there was no place for AO games on their systems. So they're going to cut out just enough gore to get it down to M. That hurts consumers, game developers, and the industry in general. [edit: not to mention the games themselves!]